By Thomas Bartlett and Robin Wilson
Huntsville, Ala.—In his first extensive interview about what happened Friday at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, James Anderson said he didn’t know that his wife, Amy Bishop, had a gun when he dropped her off at a faculty meeting at 3 p.m. Nor did he know specifically what might have caused Ms. Bishop, a biology professor at the university, to allegedly shoot and kill three of her colleagues less than an hour later. But he knew that his wife felt she had been unfairly denied tenure and that she was taking the fight to the highest level—the university’s Board of Trustees.
Mr. Anderson talked to The Chronicle outside his home Sunday morning as he and his four children prepared to leave for church. He said his wife believed that her denial had been caused, at least in part, by a miscommunication over whether two papers had been published in time to count toward her tenure bid. While some colleagues have said that she didn’t get along well with other professors, Mr. Anderson called her “very personable” and said she was a “loved teacher.” There had been no threats or hints of violence, he said, nor was he aware that his wife even had a gun.
On Friday afternoon, Mr. Anderson said, he dropped his wife off at the faculty meeting. The two often commuted together; Mr. Anderson worked at Prodigy Biosystems, located just a few minutes from the campus. Ms. Bishop was also involved with the fledgling company and was going to be its spokeswoman, he said. When she called nearly an hour later, she asked him to pick her up but didn’t mention the shooting. The couple was planning to go out for coffee as part of a scheduled date night. Ms. Bishop was in police custody before her husband arrived.
Since the shootings, Mr. Anderson said, he’s been searching for “the trigger”—that is, what might have caused his wife to open fire on her colleagues. He wondered if perhaps an e-mail message might have upset her. Often, according to Mr. Anderson, higher-ups at the university sent “nastygrams” on Fridays. He wondered whether she had received such an message, perhaps one affirming that university officials were standing behind her denial of tenure. But so far he hasn’t found anything.
Mr. Anderson said that he wanted to look through Ms. Bishop’s “two-inch-thick” tenure file, but that it had been confiscated. He said that his wife had hired a lawyer to help her regarding her tenure denial and that the lawyer had been making progress.
As for Ms. Bishop’s state of mind following her tenure denial last year, her husband said she “didn’t want to go the way of” another university scientist who had lost tenure and was now driving a shuttle bus in Huntsville. But there were reasons to be hopeful: Mr. Anderson said his wife was looking beyond the denial and had already mentioned two leads on possible jobs. She had said she was going to check on one of the leads when she got home from the faculty meeting.
The two met when they were undergraduates at Northeastern University, and Mr. Anderson was dating Ms. Bishop when she shot her brother to death more than two decades ago. He called that shooting “an absolute accident.” The Boston Globe reported that there is a controversy over whether, in fact, the shooting was accidental.
Mr. Anderson spoke to The Chronicle in the doorway of his green, wood-sided house, about 20 minutes from the campus, as a light snow fell in Huntsville. He had talked to his wife by phone earlier Sunday morning.
“I know you guys are obviously in shock,” she told him, but she didn’t go into detail because, she said, her call was being monitored. She wanted to know whether their children were OK and whether they’d done their homework.
Not his first interview:http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1232734
@sfjourno As the story says, this is the first time he’s spoken out about what happened Friday and about his wife’s tenure case.
Nice reporting job. The story gets stranger and stranger.
She kills three colleagues and sends 3 surviving wounded faculty to the hospital, then phones for hubby to pick her up. Later by phone from jail she asks if the kids have done their homework? A cool customer, or one whose detachment from her horrific deeds may be a sign of derangement.Because of the prior killing of a sibling and the possible interference with a proper police investigation by persons, this case cries out for a serious investigation of several people.
Anderson’s First EXTENSIVE InterviewThe two Chronicle writers do not identify the Chronicle interview as Anderson’s first (as #1 seems to imply) but as his first EXTENSIVE one. The interview (or its summary) raises more questions.
Thremmatologist (N. 4) has it right. This case stinks on ice, and cries out for a thorough review. A proper investigation at the time she killed her brother–apparently, according to news accounts today, after firing several times with a shotgun (hardly what one would expect of an accident) might have prevented this tragedy years later. Terrible…
That’s nothing… the Boston Globe is now reporting that in 1993 she was investigated as a prime suspect for sending pipe bombs to a Harvard professor (this was when she was a post-doc there). Reportedly she was angry that she wasn’t going to get a needed recommendation from said professor.How did THAT get hushed up, I wonder? How do people like this continue to get hired?
For Pete’s sake people, remember that her husband was a suspect WITH HER in the 1993 letter bombing attempt on a Harvard colleague of her’s. What else is he going to say? As for her being a “loved teacher”, go to ratemyprofessor.com. Very mixed reviews. And she “accidentally” shot the PUMP shotgun three different times at her parents’ house when she killed her brother. Please! You have to INTENTIONALLY cock and fire a pump shotgun. Grow a brain and use it, folks! She should have never been loose in public after killing her brother.
Here’s what it says on the home page: “In his first interview about what happened Friday at the University of Alabama at Huntsville,…
She was a “killer on the loose.”Too bad this nutcase lady is the impetus for discussion of workplace conditions and the whole process of the worker being strung-strung… strung along to get “tenure.” It is like in academy you are hired on-trial for a decade. Another article said she had joined a statement movement about students being required to live in dorms and this was not such a good move for someone awaiting tenure, etc. ? ? ? ? ? ? But what it really shows is how semi-sort of-professors are kept in maddening (pardon the term) limbo for a decade or longer. And what if the dept or university politics change to be pro-this, or anti-that? And one finds that they are not included in the new “theme.” It is just a terrible arrangement, this work under review for 10-15 years of whatever before you finally have your job. It is so messed up it is like out of a sadistic fiction book. And then other thing is, someone has to teach the undergraduates. What is wrong with that? Personally, I do not think a lot of people can both “teach the undergraduates” and also be well accomplished in research. There should be some middle ground for the capable and dedicated teachers-of-undergraduates to have a dignified and at least reasonable work environment.And what about all of the corruption? Those dragging meetings are often the sorting grounds that require otherwise open-minded and vibrant thinkers to have to agree with the politically connected leaders of the meetings. It is just horrible! horrible! horrible!
This woman has quite the rap sheet, besides her cv. It is long past time for research and study on ACADEMIC PSYCHO-KILLERS.
It is painful that 3 professors died because one professor was denied tenure. May the soul of those professors rest in peace.This tragedy is a wake up call for academic institutions. Perhaps the timeline for tenure decisions need revisiting. I used to think that the only hell on earth is in the industry; now I realize any academic institution with tenure-track could be a hell on earth too.
Look, I agree that there’s a lot of abuse in academia, and that it’s a wonder more people don’t snap. But this woman has been under a cloud of suspicion before. Didn’t anybody see any of the red flags during the hiring process? I know we can create environments that make people more likely to suffer a breakdown, but this woman shot her colleagues to death, apparently in cold blood. Was this another “accident”–something that just “happened” because of a poorly-conceived tenure policy? It may be more likely that a person will go on a killing spree after being denied tenure, but I’ll bet a stronger indicator is that a person had previously been implicated in the suspicious firearm death of her brother and an unsuccessful pipe-bomb attack on a former professor. Sometimes we need to stop imagining that evil just “happens” and accept that evil is something people choose to do. Maybe she is actually responsible for her own actions, and should be the one to bear the blame.
flamingo1813:ratemyprofessor.com as a reputable source? REALLY?? That site is a bad joke, anonymous, NOT CREDIBLE and should not be cited.new theologian:”But this woman has been under a cloud of suspicion before.” A cloud of suspicion. Well, well. Does she drown when placed under water? If yes, SHE’S FOR SURE A WITCH!! Get the matches going!!!maniac and martisco:”a rap sheet”? really? for WHAT exactly? SHE WAS CLEARED AND DECLARED INNOCENT OF ANY SUSPECTED CRIMES.She was found innocent. How dare anyone here bring up her past as way of contributing to anything Amy Bishop did recently. If you people are faculty or admin, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
One issue that keeps popping up in these opinions is one of the stress that is created by the tenure process as a partial explanation why Bishop went off the deep end. It has been suggested that the 7 to 10 year tenure process is “hell on earth” (14) or “being on trial for a decade” (11), and similar such comments I have seen in other forums. My suggestion to these commentors is that they come down from the lofty clouds of academia and realize that most people go to work everday wondering whether it will be their last day, or last week of employment. I bet most people would jump at the chance to be on a tenure track even if they knew their employment would be terminated after 7 to 10 years. Those of us who have tenure or who have tenure track employment are very fortunate indeed, when compared to the rest of the middle class workforce. Those who are employed in the current non-academic job environment have a much harder time mentally and physically coping with job related stresses because the conditions creating those stresses are a lot more severe.
For ms_annie: Did you notice that she actually killed people in a shooting rampage? Are you seriously suggesting that her past behavior has nothing to do with her present behavior? Is behavior totally random or caused only from external influences? And, yes, she was never convicted in the past, but there are certain coincidences of time and place that, while insufficient to convict someone of a crime are perfectly reasonable causes of doubt about a person’s character and what a person of such character might do in the future. This reminds me of all the questioning after the Columbine shooting, when people wanted to know how a group of disaffected, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi nihilists with weapons obsessions might actually go on a shooting rampage. Granted, perhaps the signs were a bit more obvious then than they are now, but we still see the same inability to connect the dots.
This account states “As for Ms. Bishop’s state of mind following her tenure denial last year, her husband said she ‘didn’t want to go the way of’ another university scientist who had lost tenure and was now driving a shuttle bus in Huntsville.”The person referred to is Douglas Prasher, who was the subject of an NPR story and has a Wikipedia article about him – his colleagues (although not he) got a Nobel Prize.